Darn. Now I see the fallacy of coming here only on Saturdays. This event took place on Friday. I found out about it too late and so missed my opportunity to come. I really wish I could have gone. Guess I’ll go out and play in the snow instead.

OKAY so.. we have grant fund and a blog post under essays, an ever changing ‘wheres the dialogue go’ merry go round, a completely absent author, which reduces everything to a trickle of input. seems the whole thing is stagnating.. what I mean is is, is that if david is busy elsewhere and is not running the show…who is???? coz they need to wake up or something because it seems that at the moment this is dead in the water. lets hope not.

we have to remember that the burn crew are all busy people who have professional lives to lead, and, this is only a blog at the end of the day. anyway, maybe there are backroom plans afoot. lets not pronounce the patient just yet.

wait a minute boys….Burn is publishing two essays per week, getting ready to launch new books from iconic and emerging alike and are managing again the EPF and giving out 15k…

and we are quite obviously very busy in Rio giving away free copies of the magazine version of a sold out collectors book…

i also just spent a month shooting in Dubai and lost my mother at the same time….

aren’t you taking quite a bit for granted?

your version of “Burn grinding to a halt” is a bit selfish on your part in my opinion because what you are clearly referring to is my presence here in the comment section where 99% of the readers here never go!!

listen you know damned well i care about everyone here in comments which is basically less than 25 people out of thousands of views…..and i have had personal contact with almost all of you, am ready to look at your work at any time, and do my best to stay in touch with a very busy schedule due amigos to the incredible success of Burn…we have never done more than we are doing now…

again, wish i could hang out here in comments more….but please cut me just a wee bit of slack here…time spent here is time spent away from looking at new work for example….and a whole bunch of other stuff….

i announced months ago that the place for personal chat was here on Road Trips…i try to stay off the front page of Burn most of the time….perhaps Road Trips needs more definition of what it is…maybe we will try ot make it more clear…basically what we wanted to do was have Road Trips simply be my daily ( or almost daily) diary of what i was doing ..for better or worse…

send me some pictures my friends if you want my time….i will not sleep at night until i have looked at everything you have…

and again, you well know my door literally is open to you at any time…that has not changed….and never will….yet i do have to make my own shooting and the viewing of serious photographers work my number one priority….and yes along with taking very seriously our new publishing ventures….

out of a simple blog has emerged a book publishing company…..remember?

so if you really really want my full attention go do what you are all supposed to be doing, go take some pictures….

your disappointment in me not being here is matched my friends by my disappointment in the general lack of laying work on the table from this comment audience…i give everyone here a good look and a fair chance at international exposure to a wide variety of editors and curators….yes?

Intrigued with the free publication. Can’t quite get the need to produce tangible multi-page print products out of my system, though I’ve tried. (So much work will be lost forever in the digital wilderness of history I’m afraid. If it’s not printed, it’s not real. But that’s a tangent.)

Anyway, would love to see a copy of the mag, if only a picture (maybe I missed it). Very cool that you did this for Rio, David. Should be SOP for photographers making a book. It would make all our lives easier on the streets I suspect. Book, gallery shows, giving back with free mag. Nice model.

I apologize for making such a harsh and sweeping comment. Yes I was referring to the Burn website in general and you’re quite right if you see my views as selfish. I’m just a little sad to see how apparently the Burn family seems to have disappeared slightly and by that I mean the other commentators who used to appear, some daily others weekly. I just miss some of the great discussions, ideas and friendships which have grown out of this marvelous playground you created for us. Of course lives and times change and evolve and I’m no one to be demanding others of our “family” to be always present. I have nothing but absolute gratitude to you and how much you’ve helped my photography directly in the last 2 years and way back quietly in the beginning on RoadTrips.

David…
I went crazy like you advised me to. I’ve been letting go and just trying to go loose and shooting free. You mentioned you were disappointed with the lack of laying work on the table in general from us round here and I find that very, very interesting but wow it’s so hard to create a photo that’s “absolutely” personal with authorship without just copying the greats.

Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.” Song of Songs, Chapter 4:1-2

The wise young man (or woman; there’s no point being sexist here) may read Holy Scripture for any number of good reasons. They may be seeking enlightenment and the meaning of life, or to understand the slow working out of the Lord’s will through history. They may want to learn how to best lead a righteous life or simply to find out that maybe boiling a goat in its mother’s milk isn’t such a good idea after all. But I think I can say, without too much fear of contradiction, that the one thing our ardent young seeker is not likely to get from the Bible is really good advice about dating.

The quotation above is from The Song of Songs, which is the closest thing the Bible has to a sex advice column, and as you can probably tell, the young Israelite man about town who used any of these pickup lines got nowhere fast and spent an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money getting there. I mean, really, “…thy hair is as a flock of goats”? The young man who tells his girlfriend that her hair looks like a flock of goats is a young man who can count on going home alone and with black and blue marks on his shins, especially after she just dropped a week’s pay getting her hair washed, cut, styled, and colored by that insufferably snotty gay guy down at the mall. She doesn’t need to hear you badmouthing her hair after she’s spent all that time and energy getting ready for this lousy date with your sorry self.

And then there’s that whole flock of sheep metaphor. Pardon me for saying so, but for absolutely lame pick up lines this is about as bad as what’s your sign and do you come here often? This may have worked with Israelite girls in the eighth century B.C.E., although the archaeological evidence is still out on that hypothesis. Frankly, I think it’s unlikely, but whether or not it worked then it’s going to get you nowhere now. First, the whole Little Bo Peep thing is a con job from start to finish. Sheep, even shorn or not, are not, as some people would have you believe, big fluffy adorable white wool balls. Wool is not naturally white; wool is naturally whatever the color of the last thing the sheep was rolling around in, which is usually dirt, grass, and/or sheep flop. That’s right, sheep flop; sheep are not, as you might have guessed, the brightest bulbs in the barnyard; herds of sheep will come to a screeching halt at STOP WATCH OUT FOR CHILDREN signs to check what time it is. In addition to this, as sheep go a-romping and a-rollicking through hill and dale audtioning for parts in nursery rhymes they will, on occasion, slip on yesterday’s breakfast and not wash up afterwards. Sheep are real pigs at times.

And I’m sure that every father likes to hear that after five years of braces and a small fortune spent on the orthodontist you think his little princess’ smile looks just like a bunch of stinking farm animals with a buzz cut. There’s a dad who’ll put in a good word for you when you two have a long and stupid fight about what movie to see on Saturday night. Without him on your side it’ll be a year of chick flicks every weekend without fail, and not a car chase, light saber, or explosion anywhere in sight. And to rub it in, she’ll make you stay until the end of the credits so she can listen to the sappy theme song and check out who the gaffers on this epic were. And don’t forget to bring the Kleenex, smart guy.

“And each one shall bear twins, etc…” Forget it, bubba, life as a single man is over—you just asked her to marry you. Maybe that’s not what you said or even what you meant, but that’s what she heard, take my word for it. If you’re well along in this relationship you might want to try that goats in the hair line again; that will get her angrier than blue blazes, and with any degree of luck you’ll catch a break and she’ll forget all about the proposal you didn’t know you were making at the time.

Now, you may argue, but it’s in the Bible, it has to work, right? Not necessarily, as Gershwin put it. The problem with all of these lines is that Solomon wrote them. I don’t want to criticize Sol here; a man with three books in the Bible (Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, where he calls himself the Preacher, like the Clint Eastwood character in Pale Rider, except without the pistols) obviously doesn’t need my advice at all, and who knows, maybe in Sol’s day these lines actually worked. People talked differently back in the day, like hammy actors saying stuff that no real person would say in a month of Mondays, with a lot of thees and thous and all sorts of whatnot like smiting hips and thews. There’s a lot of smiting of hips and thews in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, but you couldn’t get away with that sort of thing nowadays, what with women’s liberation and low carbohydrate diets. If you tried smiting a thew in public now the cops would come and arrest you, and probably send you over to the local loony bin for before you could hurt yourself. So maybe in a world where everyone spent their time waiting for Cecil B. DeMille to do their close-up the bit about sheep might work, although it calls for one mighty big leap of the imagination, I think.

But if you ask me, and I know you didn’t, but here’s my opinion anyway: if it doesn’t work now it probably didn’t work then, either. Even eighth century B.C.E. girls knew that the writers were the low men on the totem pole, and my guess is that at the time blondes, dumb or otherwise, were pretty scarce in that neck of the woods. Maybe I’m being unduly cynical here, but my guess is the reason those lines worked for Solomon was because he was the king. Girls then and now will excuse a lame pick-up line if they know a guy’s got a lot more to offer than some limp wheeze about them having doves’ eyes. How else do you explain Donald Trump’s success with women? Solomon may have been the hot young writer of the time, churning out copy day and night with whatever type of quill pen hot young writers used then, but he didn’t land chicks because he was a sharp man with an proverb, not by a long shot. He got them because he was the king, and like the man says, it’s good to be king. That’s one real sweet gig, no two ways about it.

ok, anyone in toronto, please come out to the CONTACT festival post-MOMA opening party :))..this is the unofficial CONTACT festival party…The exhibition is meant to have some fun and will be really crazy…all small prints made into floor to ceiling grids..and held at a Laundrymat instead of a gallery :)))…5 of my pics (from new work) there, but lots of wonderful stuff, mostly from young photographers…but also 2 DJ’s and booze until 1 am…

DAH: :)…Dominic N is part of the show as are a bunch of my friends BOREAL (who i understand you had a chance to meet in nyc the other week, so happy about that)…

so, anyone want to drop by the show and have a drink or dance or meet people…here is the info!

Paul; I find the V1 just gets out of the way and let you shoot. I’m now even using it for articles as well with no problems. I just set it on aperture or shutter priority and shoot, even in tricky lighting. I only use manual in the (near) pitch black! For me; it just lets me concentrate on shooting and experimenting. Quite a revelation…. Best NZ$370 I’ve ever spent! :-)

Panos – my son loved the one with the wine bottle. I think because he has one of those types of drones, and wishes it had firepower like that :)

Ross/Paul
I got an X100S about a month ago – I now see what all the ravings about a rangefinder viewfinder are all about. Almost like magic, being able to see what’s outside of, and about to come into, the frame. Love it so far.

John,
Thanks for the link for Chris’s book, and the review link (and the link to Mimi Mollica) ….going to figure out how to order and get it here in the states.

Andrew (all USA people). If there is a problem with ordering from there give me a shout and I will arrange something. Gareth McConnell http://www.garethmcconnell.com/projects, who is the founder of Sorika books, is aware of this and it may be fixed as we speak.

The camera itself is fine and I’ve got the 20mm lens. It’s just that I’m not very enthusiastic about the files it produces. I find the raw files noisy and the colour rendition is atrocious. Maybe having used full frame digital since they first came out is a handicap. I end up always pulling out any other camera I own.

Paul; I’ve finally come (yes I know it’s taken me a while, but I am a slow learner!) that I’m not too worried about the actual or perceived technical faults. It’s a case of making whatever limitations you find into a plus point. If it’s noisy; make it noisier etc! ;-)

True, working with the GX’s RAW files is a pain. And I don’t have Photoshop so I have to use the bundled software to do anything with them, and it goes without saying that the bundled software was translated from Japanese into English by a non-English speaking computer. Figuring out what the hell they were talking about was just a ton of fun, to say the least. I use the same basic recipe for most of the pictures I take with the GX, so I have a good idea of what the final product is going to look like even if the RAW files look like crap.

Anyway, I pulled the Solomon bit out of the freezer just to add something to the conversation. This one’s fresh off the griddle. Enjoy!

The American shad is a pelagic fish, which I understand has nothing to do with the fourth century heresiarch Pelagius or his denial of the orthodox Christian doctrine of original sin, a belief that led St. Jerome to call Pelagius an ignorant liar stuffed with Irish porridge, amongst other negative things, and everything to do with the American shad’s preference for living in the open sea far from the sight of land, where calls from telemarketers, bill collectors, and mooching relatives need never trouble them. Living in the open sea is a good thing; I’m sure the shad think so or they wouldn’t bother living there, given the property taxes out in that neck of the woods, but every year the American shad wearies of this near idyllic existence and gather together in great schools several hundred thousand strong and then head for the rivers and estuaries of North America’s eastern coast like so many Rotarians, Elks, Odd Fellows, or the fraternal organization of your choice going to their organization’s annual convention in Las Vegas. The shad head for the East Coast of America for pretty much the same reason that our Rotarians et al go to Vegas—sex—although the shad make less of a song and dance about their reasons for heading for shore. The shad, after all, are not leaving the little lady behind to keep the home fires burning; nope, the old ball and chain is going with the guys and aims to have just as much fun whooping it up as they do. There’ll be no sexual double standards here, thank you very much; this is a Democratic Party stronghold and don’t you forget it, buster.

For those of us who live near a river on the eastern coast of the United States, and yes, this category includes me, the arrival of the shad is one of the great signs of spring, along with allergies, baseball season, gnats, and having to do your income taxes, and no sooner does the shad run commence than the highways and byways of our happy little burg become lined to the danger point with cars, vans, pickup trucks, SUVs, and such other conveyances that will hold truly prodigious amounts of fishing equipment. This annual invasion of dedicated sportsmen is annoying in the extreme for those of us who live here, as our Izaak Walton wannabes seldom bother to look both ways when crossing the streets. What’s worse, or at least I think so, is that these people apparently believe that carrying a fishing rod and a tackle box conveys upon them some form of immunity from the vehicle and traffic laws of the Vampire State as well as an exemption from the laws of physics. So if any of you people, and you know who you are, are reading this, please be aware that waving your fishing rod at my thirteen year old Ford will not stop the car dead in its tracks; fishing rods are by no stretch of the imagination magic wands and this trick will no more work with my car than it will with a locomotive coming down the line. Except, of course, if I run you down, you know the law says it’s my fault, no matter how stupid you were, whereas if the train hits you and smears your dumb carcass over a mile of railroad track scores of people, including me, will read your obituary and mock you for trying to stop a locomotive with a fishing rod, and we will be happy that you have chosen to remove yourself from the gene pool. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life to improve the species. It’s a small victory, but they add up, you know, yes they do.

Arterialscerlosis is the order of the day on the Internet these days as well and I trust I didn’t hurt your neck with that segue to another subject, but I cannot help but notice the increasing narrowing of the information superhighway. For example, whenever I go online I must face a plethora of ads that promise to teach men fifty years old and over, yet another category that includes me, unfortunately, Spanish, French, and/or Italian with one simple trick. I know why this is happening; I have been going to my local public library and using the online French language program to teach myself a little bit of the language in preparation for a proposed expedition to the City of Light later this year. I have not been studying the language assiduously—I do nothing assiduously, I fear, except whine about my fate to all and sundry—and I can categorically state that after two and a half hours of not very intensive study my French is somewhat less good than my Spanish, a language that I have not been studying assiduously since high school. So I guess there’s hope for me yet. Also, I am not sure that this trip is even possible at this point, and to paraphrase Will Rogers, I am wasting no time on a prospect.

In any case, these cyberlinguistic Burma-Shave signs promising me deliverance from the drudgery of learning French irregular verb conjugations with one simple trick invariably come with a photo of an attractive young lady of uncertain national origin whose primary assets are her nice looks, her nice smile, and her overly impressive bosom, which I do not understand, since everything about this young lady is designed to make me forget the various conjugations of avoir (to have) faster than I learned them. I therefore suspect that she is not the one simple trick the advertisers promise I can use to unlock my inner Cyrano de Bergerac; if she were, then Hugh Hefner would, by definition, be able to speak all the living languages of the Earth and most of the dead ones, including Pictish and Akkadian, high school foreign language programs would require their students to read Playboy as homework from one end of this our Great Republic to the other, and Viagra would replace Ritalin and Prozac as the pedagogical drug of choice in the nation’s schools. That Playboy is not required reading tells me that learning French and Spanish is more difficult than this one simple trick can handle and that the purpose of the young lady is to distract my attention while these jokers loot my checking account. The thing, of course, is that I’m not fifteen anymore. When I was fifteen this dodge would have worked in a New York minute; when most of your body weight is testosterone almost anything sounds sensible if presented in the right package; but a couple of generations have come and gone since high school, I fear, and most of my body weight is cholesterol now, a substance not nearly interesting as testosterone, as I am sure a good many people out there can verify. Avoir, aurai, avais, ayant…I haven’t gotten the present tense yet, but I’m working on it.

well, as i said i have always wanted to do something like this…i mean i do always try to bring pictures back to people as i am shooting, yet nobody ever gets to see the final product..most of my NatGeo subjects for example never see a copy of the magazine….a few copies get distributed but the majority never see anything printed…i must say this has been fun…still only a gesture…yet far and away the most rewarding payback to the subjects i have ever been able to do….

we are also in the favelas doing flour and water “pastings” on walls the whole book/magazine..a street exhibition if you will…again, a whole new experience….

you have any east coast trips coming? i will be OBX a good hunk of the summer (i hope)…so stop by please

i lived in Richmond, Virginia for many years….the James River full of shad in the spring….and if you wanted to get elected governor or mayor or representative or get any publicly elected job, you sure as hell had better get to a good old shad planking if you wanted the vote….as usual, thanks for your insights…who are you really?

i have been shooting with the X100S for all of the Dubai work and shooting with it now in Rio….i agree the files are amazing…i do find it slower to work with than the GF1 however…slower auto focus…super annoying on the start up after the camera sleeps…and not as user friendly as the GF1 w the menu bit..i can get hopelessly lost in the menu and also can get in all kinds of trouble by accidentally hitting the wrong button on the back…what i want is the GF1 with the X100S files!!! and so it goes and so it goes….

by the way, not sure if anyone in this audience has been to any of my exhibitions in the last year, but the 64×44 inch prints Mike Courvoisier has made for me from the GF1 look fine right next to the M9 prints…my very best pictures in the last year were made with the GF1…so damned user friendly , loose…easy….wish they had just worked on improving that camera…the GX1 just is not the same to use….meanwhile my D800 which is just a terrific camera technically mostly sits unused..for whatever reasons, i tend to go iPhone and point and shoot camera OR all the way to Mamiya VII and film…..i guess if i am going “big” camera i just want film….in the 35mm size digi fine…but still the medium format film beats em all….

Arterialscerlosis, Civi, not arterioscerlosis. The latter is a super serious medical condition that you should see a doctor about promptly, the former is a word I made up three days ago to denote the narrowing of public streets due to idiots with fishing rods hereabouts. And who am I really? No one. Just another dull and uninteresting civil service cipher. You can ask anybody.

Those X100S files stand out a mile away compared to files from most other digital cameras. The first time I saw my playing about test shots with the 100XS on my screen they immediately reminded me of the intensity of good old Fuji Velvia. Your latest Rio work reminds me of the beautiful colours from Divided Soul.
BTW I also lived in Richmond Virginia as a kid round about 1981.

A quick word of caution about the Gx1. Be extremely careful with the LCD screen, its extremely delicate. I managed to somehow ruin my screen after having wiped the ketchup off my eldest son’s cheek as we ate lunch at Burger King…

Has anyone used Blurb or some other service like it? My brother got married on Saturday and I’m thinking of putting the pictures I took in a book for them instead of burning a CD and I was just wondering which service works the best for this sort of thing. Anyone have any ideas? TIA